


Adult Fear

by Rick_KTish



Series: Rick's Linked Universe things [2]
Category: The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Nightmares, Twilight (Linked Universe) Needs a Hug, Wind is Best Big Bro
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-21
Updated: 2020-09-21
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:07:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26581879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rick_KTish/pseuds/Rick_KTish
Summary: Twilight has a nightmare. Someone unexpected comes to give some much-needed comfort.
Relationships: Twilight & Wind (Linked Universe)
Series: Rick's Linked Universe things [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1668484
Comments: 11
Kudos: 133





	Adult Fear

_ He isn’t going to make it.  _

_ He spurs Epona faster, leaning down over her neck, trying to get to Colin, but it’s like they’re riding through water; everything slow, dulled; the King Bulblin is waving the post Colin is tied to,taunting him, but something’s wrong. They tied the ropes too high. Colin’s face is red; he’s choking, gravity and force pressing the ropes against his windpipe as he’s swung around, and still, Link can’t get to him any faster. Even if he defeats the bulblin, it will still be too late, Colin can’t breathe, he’s going to suffocate and it will be all Link’s fault, if only Epona would move faster—  _

_ “You’re the one who’s going so slow,” she tells him, and he knows, he’s sorry for blaming her, it’s not her fault. He dismounts without slowing, but the ground is going backwards. He can’t get through the water, can’t run faster than the ground to catch up to the King Bulbin, and Link tastes blood in his mouth and feels the pain in his cheeks as he grits his teeth, watching Colin’s head loll and his feet sway limply as he’s swung around. Link is too late. Colin is already dead.  _

Everything is black around him, the sounds of restless crickets chirrupping in the night around him. He fights to reach out to the image still before him, tears stinging his eyes, but he can’t move his hand; he’s frozen, as trapped as Colin was, and he can’t do anything to stop the tears and the pain as he gasps, finally waking fully. 

He’s panting through clenched teeth, and it takes him a moment to find the presence of mind to force his jaw to relax as the image of Colin’s limp body fades rapidly from his mind’s eye and dissipates into the night. It was only a dream. He knew it was a dream when it was happening, but somehow that didn’t make it any easier to break out of. 

He pushes himself up, feeling sticky and hot. It’s a cool night, but he’d bedded down fully clothed; they were planning on an early start in the morning. Moving helps to further banish the dream, and he begins pulling off his pelt, tunic and mail frantically with hands still numb and shaking from the nightmare. His eyes and nose are hot and stinging, and he lets the tears fall but does his best to hold in the gasps, the sobs that want to pull themselves from his throat like warped wood stuck fast. One brief groan escapes as he struggles with the tie on his waistwrap; his gasping has pressed the fabric outward, tightening the knot, and his fingers are weak and stiff and he can’t get it untied for a moment that feels like hopelessness and tastes like failure.

Finally he gets a thumb under a looser loop and manages to pull the whole thing unraveled, voice silent once again as he lets it fall to the ground. He yanks and wrenches at his tunic and mail together, scrambling to his knees to pull them fully off, and collapses spinelessly forward as the cool night air hits his shoulders and back through his undershirt. He kneels there trembling with his face pressed into his pelt as he finally begins to catch his breath.

The burn of stretching his thighs after holding every muscle clenched so tightly is a relief that helps to ground him, along with poking his tongue at his bitten cheeks. It’s probably the pain that woke him up, which he appreciates, but they’re going to be a pain for the next week every time he eats and accidentally bites them again. There’s one spot in particular that he just knows is going to catch on his lower canines when he’s talking, and he prods at it, allowing it to distract him from the echo of Beth’s scream and Colin’s limp little body lying too-still in his arms.

The dream is a lie. He knows that it is, but he still remembers the fear paralyzing him down to his very bones, and all he can do to drive it away is breathe. 

There’s a sound nearby, a whisper of cloth rubbing roughly against itself, a light step accustomed to sneaking on wood rather than grass. The sailor approaches.

He almost expects the boy to speak, to ask what’s wrong, but supposes that any of their group must have some experience with this sort of thing as instead he hears the light steps get closer, the quiet breathing creep near, and then a gentle thud as the boy lands smoothly beside him with his legs folded, no words necessary. They remain silent together as the screams and the numbness and the light of sunset burning into his mind’s eye fade into nothing.

The night air begins to actually chill him, and he curls up a little bit further and wraps his arms around himself, breath still shuddering unsteadily, but mind fully adjusted at last to the here and now. It’s only when he hears an arm shifting to touch him, however, that he finds the will to unfold himself at last. The grounding hand on his shoulder helps as he falls off his knees and hauls one leg out in front of him to rest his elbow on. Several minutes pass with only the sound of the crickets and the rhythm of their breathing coming slowly to match one another.

Finally, the sailor speaks.

“Do you want to name it?”

Twilight gives him a mystified look.

Wind shuffles a bit, shifting to a more comfortable position. “Granma always says that naming a fear is what fears are afraid of. If you give it a name, you’re better able to drive it away.”

Twilight considers that, looking out into the darkness around their camp over the sleeping bodies of their companions.

“Failure,” he concludes after a time, and Wind’s hand squeezes his shoulder before it’s removed entirely, the pirate using it instead to shift himself closer so that he can wrap one rail-thin arm around the older boy. 

“What kind?”

“The worst kind.” The words choke him slightly coming out, still stuck on that warped wood in his throat. “Failing someone who trusted me to take care of him.”

Wind is silent for a moment, digesting that, before speaking again.

“Was it real?”

Twilight shakes his head, eyes getting hot again. “No. But it could have been. If I hadn’t ridden fast enough, if Epona and I didn’t work together so well— it really, really could have been.”

Wind sighs, closing his eyes, and leans in to Twilight. In response, Twilight finally lifts his arm to wrap around the younger boy, drawing him close. If he were home in Ordon, he’d be holding Colin like this, reminding himself that he’s real and alive and that Twilight didn’t fail him. Wind says nothing as Twilight’s body starts shaking again with trembling breaths and a few hot tears land in his hair. 

Wind waits for Twilight’s breathing to even out and his tears to slow before speaking again. Eventually he offers, “When the Helmaroc King took Aryll, I ran off a cliff trying to get to her.”

Twilight is so surprised he lets out an almost-laugh with his watery “What?”

Wind nods under his arm. “Not a little one, neither. Outset has a high cliff, probably sixty or eighty feet high, with woods at the top. Tetra an’ Gonzo an’ I were coming out of those woods when the bird snatched Aryll, and I forgot everything about where I was and what was happening, I just wanted to get to her, and if Tetra hadn’t caught my arm and held on fast, I’d likely not have been alive to go save her.”

Twilight digests that thought for a minute, processing. He catches himself biting at the swollen places where he’d chewed his cheeks in his sleep but can’t bring himself to stop. He’ll regret it later, he’s sure.

“I think that’s the worst feeling,” Wind continues after a moment, and Twilight squeezes him. What a thing, to comfort and be comforted at the same time. “Knowing that I was so close, and I nearly screwed it up forever by forgetting where I was. If I had died right there, no one would have gone to rescue her. No one would have stopped Ganondorf. Everything would have gone wrong from that one stupid mistake, and I’d only be the stupid kid who threw himself off a cliff when his little sister was kidnapped.”

Twilight knows the feeling.

“Do you dream about it?” he asks, but he already knows the answer.

Wind hums in response. “All the damn time.”

The restless crickets sing around them in the darkness. The wind blows, rustling the grass and trees around them, and further away a fish jumps, splashing in the small pond nearby. It’s a peaceful night, as nights tend to be in Wild’s Hyrule. They sit, leaning on each other, letting the silence drive away the nightmares.

Eventually Twilight notices that the chill has become less than comfortable, and glances down. Wind’s eyes are closed. Carefully, trying not to disturb the boy, he reaches out and nabs his pelt, intending to throw it over the both of them.

“It gets better, you know.”

Only long practice at hunting monsters and game alike keeps Twilight from jumping at Wind’s voice. Then he processes the words and finds himself startled for entirely different reasons. 

He looks down at Wind and wonders for the first time how long it’s been since the sailor’s first quest. He’s  _ nearly fourteen, _ as he insists on reminding them so often, but that doesn’t really give much to go on. Wind might have been twelve, or elven, or even younger when he’d seen his sister kidnapped and found himself fighting to save the world from an evil more ancient than any written record known to any of their party. As best Twilight can tell, Sky, Warriors and himself were late starters for their quests. The others had all been in their early teens or younger, Wind very clearly included. How long has he been doing this? Adventuring? Saving people? Losing friends along the way?

It makes something in Twilight’s soul ache to realize that Wind, having been on two adventures to Twilight’s own one, is admittedly the more experienced hero, despite being the younger of them. 

Wind is still speaking.

“It takes a while, but the more you do and the more you remind yourself that you didn’t fail them then, it starts to go away. The nightmares get less frequent, less real. It gets better.”

Twilight’s voice is rough with exhaustion and emotion as he grinds out a hesitant, “Does it really?” 

He’s alarmed at how young he sounds. 

Conversely, Wind looks far older than his years as he opens his eyes and looks up from under Twilight’s arm with a seriousness and confidence beyond anything Twilight has ever seen in himself. 

“Yeah,” he affirms, and somehow Twilight finds himself believing. “Now,” Wind continues, voice lighter, “we should both really go to sleep; Wild’s wantin’ us to make Kakariko tomorrow, if you recall, and it’s going to be a bit of a hike, if I was reading his map right over his shoulder.”

Twilight nods and grabs his pelt, moving to spread it over them before Wind surprises him once more by reaching behind them and pulling his own blanket forward. He suddenly looks embarrassed. Twilight chuckles a little roughly. 

“You wanna stay here?” 

Wind shrugs. “We don’t really get nights like this on the Great Sea. It’s a bit chillier than I’m used to. And Sky doesn’t produce as much heat as you’d think with that sailcloth of his, I think living up so high gave him a weird sense of temperature, and Time and Warriors are both sleeping upright since we’re so close to that bokoblin camp, and you’ve got your pelt...”

Twilight laughs a little more, quietly, before shuffling them around to spread Wind’s blanket and his pelt both over them. He’s certainly not going to object to the company. Wind sighs contentedly at the warmth lingering under the pelt’s thick fur, and Twilight gives him one last squeeze before laying back into his bedroll. He’s still a bit tense, uncertain whether he’ll be able to go back to sleep or not, when he hears a faint humming coming from around his shoulder. Twilight himself will freely admit that he can hardly carry a tune in a bucket when someone else is hauling with him, but Wind’s voice is well-practiced from months of nights at sea with little more than a pennywhistle and perhaps a viol to accompany. He hums something slow and bright in a confident tenor that makes Twilight think of sunrise and the passage of the world from day to night and back again. He gets the feeling it’s supposed to go a bit faster for dancing, but slowed down it makes a fine lullaby, and he finds himself relaxing more quickly than he’d hoped, knowing that morning will come more quickly than he’d feared. 

“Thank you,” he murmurs, shortly before drifting off, and he can just about feel Wind shuffling carefully beside him, an arm over his shoulders and a kiss against his forehead before the Sailor is back under the blanket and pressed against his side once more, and then... 

_ Sleep.  _

**Author's Note:**

> TV tropes defines Adult Fear as "[T]he things mature, well-adjusted adults generally are concerned about, as opposed to supernatural, petty, or far-fetched fears[...]"  
> Based largely on my own experiences dealing with nightmares about my little siblings being in danger while I was away at college. I didn't have a convenient cuddlebuddy nearby, but I was able to call my mom and ask her to remind me that the kiddos were safe. She was very patient with my 1 am calls and I'm very grateful.  
> Wind is a big brother and deserves respect. As an oldest sibling, I genuinely have no idea how to be the younger sibling in a dynamic; the closest I've come to such is interacting with an uncle who's close in age. Bold of any of you to assume that Wind knows how to be little brother; I just wanted to explore that.  
> Also has anyone else noticed that Twilight Princess and Wind Waker are the same story just with different dynamics? TP is a linear quest with dark tones and themes about a big brother figure trying to rescue his village's children and getting caught up in a plot to destroy the world, so he has to gatehr the pieces of an ancient magical artifact to save the day alongside his snarky companion. Wind waker is and open-world adventure in a cartoony style about a big brother trying to save his little sister and getting caught up in a plot to destroy the world, so he has to gather the pieces of an ancient magical artifact to save the day alongside his mysterious but noble companion. Same story, different mechanics and characters. Interesting, no?  
> Oh! and Wind is humming the Song of Passing. Since the Wind Waker is what activates the magic, it's not actually going to speed them through to the next day, but the idea is there.  
> I had my Big Little Brother beta this for me, so hopefully I got the most glaring mistakes out of the way. I hope it's as fun to read as it was to write! Thanks for reading!


End file.
